Google has suspended our app so Mobile Hidden Camera is now not available on Google Play.

Good News

Don’t worry; we’re still here and we’ll always be here enhancing and updating MHC. In fact, we’ve already started working on our next major upgrade of the app to bring you even greater spying features!

What has then changed?

In terms of the app, Mobile Hidden Camera can only get better and better as we’re fully committed to keep enhancing the app to take advantage of the latest mobile technologies for professional-grade spy shooting.

In terms of how we distribute our app, we simply revert to our very own licensing infrastructure with Paypal. So you can simply follow our Paypal buttons on this website to purchase an upgrade option, then our system will email you a license key right away. You can simply download and install our “license key version” of MHC from our downloads section and activate the upgrade on the fly with the license key.

In fact we’ve been running this infrastructure ever since our inception in September 2010. Back then Android Market still did not support paid apps nor in-app purchases yet. So we built our very own licensing infrastructure with Paypal, so that customers could easily purchase MHC upgrades thru Paypal and then quickly activate their upgrades with a license key to enjoy MHC full features on the fly.

For users who have previously upgraded thru Google Play in-app purchase, but now find MHC reverted to the free LITE edition

First, you need to understand when Google took down MHC, they took away your in-app purchases at the same time. It’s just like they take down a paid app so you won’t be able to re-install the paid app anymore. Your investment is lost.

Don’t worry, this is the time we showcase how professional developers like us differentiate ourselves from the rest. We already have a plan to deal with scenarios like this, and we’re proud to tell that we’re the only developer who’d go this far to help our customers. We can help you easily recover your investments. In full, and at no cost!

Simply put, just email us at support[at]mobilehiddencamera[dot]com with your Google Play purchase details, then we’ll quickly email you a license key that you can use to upgrade MHC on the fly.

For MHC users who’ve previously upgraded thru Paypal

You’re not affected in any way. You can always install MHC’s license key version from our website’s downloads section and activate all the features on the fly.

For users who’re trying out any other spy camera apps

This is a great example to show you how vulnerable your app purchases are. If you purchase any other spy camera app on Google Play, once Google takes down the app you’ll lose all your investments! You won’t even be able to re-install the app. Even if you find the app’s APK file you won’t get any of the paid features because Google Play will have also removed your paid licenses.

But if you choose Mobile Hidden Camera, you don’t have to worry at all. We’re always here and you can always use our license key version in case anything happens. We still keep updating the app constantly with even greater features so MHC can only get better and better!

And we’ve been around since 2010 and we’re the only one who guarantee you have a perpetual license to use the app.

Being a professional software developer, however demanding our users are, we’ve always tried our very best to meet and exceed their expectations.

We’ve been acting this way ever since our inception in 2010.

However, some users just keep surprising you.

Recently we’ve been stunned by a user named Dian Guang on Google Play. He’s by far the most unreasonable user we’ve seen in 5+ years of MHC’s history.

On 16 May 2015, Dian Guang commented on Google Play Store that he lost his MHC license and he said we didn’t respond to his email enquiry. (the fact? for users who have contacted us for lost licenses, we’ve always replied with a valid license within hours if not minutes)

As soon as we saw his Google Play Store comment, we went searching our email system but as expected we couldn’t find anything. (Google Play comments don’t show the user email, so when a user just leaves a negative comment there, basically there’s no way we could find his email and there’s no way we could email him simply because there’s no contact point.)

So we replied on the Google Play comment section, with a 350 characters limit, and told him that we didn’t see any email from his name and asked him to email us.

This is my 2nd attempt, the reason I am writing this message again regarding licensing issue is because I was told by someone on “Google Play” who claimed to be a staff that this issue can be resolved by sending you an email. The issue is: I purchased pro version and stopped working ever since I switch to a new phone. Thanks.

Then, we searched our email again and we confirmed that this was actually his first enquiry about a lost license. Never mind, even if he thought it’s his 2nd attempt, so be it.

Apparently, he previously made an in-app purchase of MHC license; and because Google removed MHC from Play Store and we re-listed MHC as a new app, he lost his purchased license.

So, as always, we quickly generated a new license key and helped him converted his Google in-app purchased license to our direct license. We sent him a license key and replied his email within 2 hours.

As Google has recently taken MHC off the shelf; even now we’ve re-pubilshed it on Google Play, Google treats it as a new app now; so effectively Google has also taken away your in-app purchases. (this can happen to any paid apps as well, once Google takes down the app, you’ll lose all your paid apps & in-app purchases)

But don’t worry; over these years we’ve already built a infrastructure that could help you re-gain your license. And we proudly tell you we’re the only developer who do this to help customers re-gain their lost licenses. For other apps, you’d have lost your purchases already.

We’ve generated a license key for you. Please install the latest version of MHC from our website’s downloads section and you can easily activate your purchased features right away.

Now, if you open MHC’s settings / upgrade now page, do you see “activate with license key”?

If you do NOT see “activate with license key” but you see “retrieve license”, that means you have the WRONG version of MHC. You should install MHC’s license key version from our website’s downloads section instead. (http://www.mobilehiddencamera.com/downloads)

(if you don’t have the license key email in your email inbox, be sure to check your junk mail folder; it must have got stuck there!)

After that, hit back in MHC until you get back to your phone’s home screen, then just re-launch MHC and it’ll get upgraded automatically. You can go to MHC’s settings page, scroll down to the bottom and it tells you the correct edition there.

(If, after restarting MHC, it still shows LITE edition, simply try activation again. A couple users have previously reported that activation didn’t work the 1st time but it always works the 2nd time. We’ll definitely resolve this issue with our next update)

Regards,
Pitt

PS. while you said this is your 2nd attempt to contact us, we’ve searched through our email but we do not find any previous email from you concerning this licensing issue.

Anyway, now that we got your email, and we can already help just within a couple hours. We’re professional software developers and we do provide professional services for our customers. We hope you’d appreciate this; and we hope you’d kindly update your Google Play Store comment as well. (we always respond to customer enquiries fast!)

PPS. to make it easier for you we’re also attaching the license key version’s APK file here, so you can simply click the attachment to install.

So, we thought we settled this; quick and tidy.

For all users who’ve been affected by Google’s removal of our app, we’ve always generated a new license for them and replied in a very timely and professional manner like this, and it’s always worked well.

All users who’ve contacted us previously have appreciated our efforts to grant them a new license so they could keep enjoying this great app.

Except this user.

The next day, we’re surprised when we saw this user updated his Google Play comment, saying that the issue’s not resolved. He said that he wouldn’t trust our APK file.

Apparently, he does NOT understand the way Android security works and he does NOT understand the “trust” relationship between the user, the app developer and Google Play.

So we thought we should send him another email and clarify things for him.

We can’t believe you would still complain even after we’ve responded fast and generated a new license for you.

First of all, if you don’t trust a developer, you should NOT even install the app from Google PlayStore.

Apparently you do not fully understand the “trust” between you as the user, the app developer and Google Play Store. Let’s briefly explain this for you.

1. apps published on Google Play Store are NOT reviewed by Google; they can be good apps, or they can be malicious apps. (on the contrary, Apple screens apps before they’re published on Apple AppStore. But Android users like Android just because Android is “open”, and you’re free to choose your apps, not Google chooses them for you)

2. when you install an app from Google Play, it guarantees the software you install is the same package the developer uploads to Google Play Store. However, it does NOT guarantee the software is safe.

4. so if you install an app from Google Play Store, you’re just trusting that the app you’re installing is exactly the app that the developer uploaded to the playstore, i.e. it’s the official software package.

This is NOT to protect users from bad developers. (because Google does NOT review the app, they don’t even know if the app is good or bad)

The Google PlayStore only protects you from installing an “unofficial package” of an app. Instead, it’s the “rating system” that protects you from bad apps.

e.g. we release MHC on Google Play Store; then you should NOT download MHC from other websites. Because it’s possible that someone downloads MHC’s APK file, then inject some virus to it, and put it online somewhere for other users to download. Then if you download that “infected” copy of MHC, you get a problem.

However, what if you only download MHC’s APK file from the developer’s official website? The “trust level” is just exactly the same.

For example, if MHC is a malicious app, you shouldn’t install it from google playstore already. If you don’t trust a developer, don’t even install from google play. Google Play doesn’t protect you from that.

However, if you install an app from google play, that already means you trust that developer. And there’s really no difference of installing the app from our official google play page or from our official website. Because the app downloaded from our official website is the “official” copy. (but of course, do NOT download MHC’s apk file from anywhere other than our official website)

5. now as for why google removed our app;

first of all, google is famous of arbitrarily removing Android apps from the play store. And many users have lost their paid apps because of this. We’re the only developer who have built our own licensing infrastructure and so we’re able to re-create new licenses for our users so they wouldn’t lose their licenses.

and why could we do that? it’s because of our long history; we first released MHC in 2010 when Andriod Market (google play store’s name back then) didn’t even support paid apps. So at that time we built our own licensing infrastructure with the Paypal payment gateway. That’s why for all these years, even after Google introduced in-app billing on google playstore, we’ve kept releasing MHC’s Paypal license key version.

Also, since google supported paid apps, they require all developers to use Google wallet and they ban all developers who use Paypal. (We were also banned by them once before, just because we were still accepting Paypal in our app) That’s why now we need to maintain 2 versions of MHC. The Play Store version only supports Google in-app billing. And the website version supports Paypal payments.

by the way, google never explains why they suspended an app; but for what we saw, we can understand that Google wouldn’t allow spy camera apps, and especially MHC has been the most successfully spy camera app and we’ve always been listed on top 10 of the camera charts. This embarrasses Google and so they needed to remove our app.

Hope this clarifies things for you.

Regards,
Pitt

Having explained from Android’s security framework to the whole situation we thought we’ve been acting professionally. And while we already sensed how unreasonable this user is, we’ve been trying our best to keep clam and didn’t want to be rude.

However it only led to another surprising Google Play comment:

Dian Guang on May 17, 2015 at 12:01 PM

Harassment Premium version has been removed from Google Play. After I calmly described the situation, instead of trying to deal with Google, they started to send me harassment emails in a rude and unprofessional manner, I filtered their email and reported to Google. According to Google, further legal actions might be needed from my side.
You replied on May 17, 2015 at 9:40 AM

We just can’t believe it.

1. When Google removed our app, he complained.
2. When we generated a license for him and resolved the whole issue, he kept complaining.
3. When we reached out to explain things to him, he complained further and said it’s “harassment”.

We’re having great difficulties communicating with you; while we’ve resolved your technical issue and also responded to every one of your emails within hours, you say you still haven’t received any feedback from us.

Up to now, your Google PlayStore comment has become our only feasible channel of communication; however Google Play only allows for 350 characters when we respond there so we really cannot explain things for you.

So, we’re now writing this post to explain the issue in full details to you; showing you all our previous email exchanges. There might be a problem with your email service provider; maybe they’re not functioning, or maybe they’re just blocking emails from our company. So we’ve previously asked you to provide us another email address for communication, but you then just provided the same email address so we’re still unable to reach you.

We hope you wouldn’t mind we put our email exchanges online; don’t worry though, we have all personal and sensitive details hidden already.

We want to emphasize that your technical problem was fully resolved days ago. All you need is to re-perform license activation now and it’ll work perfectly well again.

Sun, 7 Dec 2014 14:00:24 – we replied again, telling you the issue was resolved and you just needed to retry activation

Tue, 9 Dec 2014 13:06:07 – we saw your negative Google PlayStore comment, complaining that we didn’t reply your email; so we responded to both your Google Play comment and email telling you we’ve already helped you resolved the issue.

Tue, 9 Dec 2014 16:41:36 – you kept saying, in your Google PlayStore comment, that you didn’t get our emails; we responded to both your Google Play comment and email again. We also asked you to provide us another email address so we’d try to send to the other email address.

Tue, 9 Dec 2014 23:24:39 – you emailed us again, telling us to send email to the same email address that we had been sending to.

We see your Google Play comments; but we really don’t understand; we’ve replied each of your previous emails within hours.

And as you said you couldn’t upgrade to PREMIUM edition, we’ve already reset your license and you just have to install our latest version (install from our website http://www.mobilehiddencamera.com/downloads) and retry activation. It’ll work now.

Now we don’t understand whether you haven’t received our email responses or there’s any problem when you tried activating again?

BTW, we’ve just re-published MHC onto Google Play; but we’ve lost over 20,000 of 5-star ratings and great comments due to the app’s removal by Google. So please, please go over to Google Play to give us a 5-star rating & plus+1’s and some good words!

We really need your kind words to help MHC so we can re-gain user support from scratch, to support our continuous development! (as you know we’ve been constantly improving MHC since 2010!)

You can go to Google Play Store and search for “mobile hidden camera”, but note that now MHC could be listed down to 50~60 places because we’ve lost all the ratings! (it used to be #1 before)

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 7:08 PM, mobilehiddencamera.com Support wrote:

2012-05-10 23:08:28 UTC
Dear Customer,
Thank you for purchasing software license for Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM. This email contains important information regarding your order, please save it for future reference.
To enjoy all the features Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM provides, you will have to activate the software on your device. Please note that the license is on a per-device basis. With one software license, you are eligible to activate Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM on one device.
If you have not installed Mobile Hidden Camera LITE yet, please install it from our website http://www.mobilehiddencamera.com first. (or use this direct download link: http://www.mobilehiddencamera.com/download/mhc/current )
To upgrade Mobile Hidden Camera LITE to Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM, simply open Mobile Hidden Camera LITE on your device, go to Settings, Upgrade Now, Activate with license key. Then enter the following information:
Registered Email: xxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
License Key: xxxxxxxxxx
Click the Activate button and Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM will be activated on-the-fly.
After activation finishes, restart the application to enjoy all the new features of Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM.
If you come across any issues during activation, please make sure you have typed in the correct email address and license key.
If for some reason you have re-installed Mobile Hidden Camera PREMIUM or even your whole system, you can simply go through the activation process again.
If you have previously installed MHC from Android Market and you don’t find the license key activation option in the app, simply install the latest version of MHC directly from our website and you’ll find that option.
If you need help, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@mobilehiddencamera.com.
Thank you,
mobilehiddencamera.com Support

BTW, we’ve just re-published MHC onto Google Play; but we’ve lost over 20,000 of 5-star ratings and great comments due to the app’s removal by Google. So please, please go over to Google Play to give us a 5-star rating & plus+1’s and some good words!

We really need your kind words to help MHC so we can re-gain user support from scratch, to support our continuous development! (as you know we’ve been constantly improving MHC since 2010!)

You can go to Google Play Store and search for “mobile hidden camera”, but note that now MHC could be listed down to 50~60 places because we’ve lost all the ratings! (it used to be #1 before)

Much to our surprise, our award winning spy camera solution Mobile Hidden Camera has been suspended on Google Play Store.

Earlier today we received an email from the Google Play Team that they have removed MHC due to “Violation of the dangerous products provision of the Content Policy”.

Apparently, on one hand they are saying that spying apps are prohibited on Google Play Store and thus they are suspending our Mobile Hidden Camera app, the only professional-grade spy camera solution since 2010 with over 4 million downloads and a 4.5+ average rating; while on the other hand they are leaving other inferior copycat apps on the Play Store intact.

We’re currently taking care of this matter. We’ll re-publish MHC on Google Play as soon as we make MHC compliant with Google’s content policy. Rest assured we’ll keep enhancing MHC, and it’ll remain the best mobile spy camera solution, ever. In fact, we’ve just made MHC Android 5.0 Lollipop ready!

Now, for the time being:

For new MHC users
Though MHC isn’t on Google Play at this moment, it’s always available for free download at our website’s downloads section. So just grab it there!

For users who have installed MHC from Google Play
If you’re running MHC’s free LITE edition, feel free to keep using it! If one day you’d like to get the most out of it and go for an upgrade, just re-install MHC’s license key version from our website’s downloads section. You can then easily upgrade thru Paypal and activate all the features on the fly.

For users who have upgraded thru Google Play in-app billing
Don’t worry, this is the time we showcase how professional developers like us differentiate ourselves from the rest. We already have the infrastructure to deal with scenarios like this, and we’re proud to tell that we’re the only one who does this.

First, you need to understand when Google takes down MHC, they take down the in-app purchases at the same time. It’s just like they take down a paid app so you won’t be able to re-install the paid app anymore.

No problem for our users though. If you ever want to re-install MHC, just shoot us an email and attach your Google Play e-receipt of your purchase. We’ll help convert your license. Afterwards you can just install our license key version of the app from our website’s downloads section and activate all the features on the fly.

For MHC users who upgraded thru Paypal
You’re not affected in any way. You can always install MHC’s license key version from our website’s downloads section and activate all the features on the fly.

For users who’re trying out any other spy camera apps
This is a great example to show you how vulnerable your app purchases are. If you purchase any other spy camera app on Google Play, once Google takes down the app you’ll lose all your investments! You won’t even be able to re-install the app. Even if you find the app’s APK file you won’t get any of the paid features because Google Play will have also removed your paid licenses.

But if you choose Mobile Hidden Camera, you don’t have to worry at all. We’re always here and you can always use our license key version in case anything happens. We still keep updating the app constantly with even greater features so MHC can only get better and better!

And we’re the only one who can guarantee you have a perpetual license to use the app.

While Android L (i.e. Android 5.0 Lollipop) is around the corner, we’ve put our latest version of MHC through our rigorous test suite on this next-generation Android platform.

We can proudly announce that MHC works perfectly well on Android L.

Whichever edition of MHC suits your taste, rest assured it works perfectly well on any previous versions, the current version, and even the next version of Android. You can download MHC from Google Play Store or just through our website’s downloads section.

AndroidHeadlines.com, one of the most trusted Android news and apps review site, has recently reviewed MHC thoroughly.

Their conclusion?

Speed (5/5) – using it was easy and fast

Features (5/5) – a ton of stuff that the app could do

Theme (4/5) – because of the nature of what it does and the fact that it works with all android phones from 1.1 plus, this is understandable

Overall (4.5/5) – If there is ever any time that you need to take pictures or videos without others knowing and still ensure your safety, this app will provide you with every tool to make sure that you do things completely stealthy

AndroidHeadlines.com has been one of the leading sources of Android news for the android community since 2010. They provide the most comprehensive Android news coverage and in-depth reporting of Google’s Android Platform, Phones, Tablets, Applications, Reviews and mobile focused technology information. AndroidHeadlines.com works closely with Google and it’s partners to bring all the latest Android news, product information and community content to an audience of over one million monthly readers.

One of the greatest features of Android 4.4.x KitKat, also probably the most under-reported one, is the next generation Android RunTime (ART).

What is ART?

When you start any apps on your Android device, the system actually takes some time and effort to compile the app package to machine code so your device can understand and execute. It does this Just in Time of execution. So as you run apps on your device, it actually keeps doing these resource intensive tasks in the background and this is a major reason why people notice Android apps are a bit sluggish when compared to their iOS counterparts.

This is, until you switch to the new Android RunTime (ART).

With ART enabled, machine code compilations are done Ahead of Time during app installation. So when you run apps on your device, it can skip all that and simply executes the code directly.

The result? Reports show that ART yields performance improvements of around 10% to 20% on average. On the other hand it also boosts battery life because your device now does a lot less resource intensive machine code compiling. Take into considerations ART is currently a preview technology in Android 4.4.x KitKat so it can only get better and better in upcoming Android releases.

What this means to MHC users?

It means MHC gets even better!

In normal shooting MHC already performs better with ART enabled. But it gets even more interesting with the extreme features in MHC PREMIUM edition like background shooting. Now everything runs faster on your device and in MHC’s background shooting mode, while MHC keeps shooting in the background, not only can you keep running other apps on top but now you do it even more naturally with enhanced performance and you can also do it for longer thanks to new battery savings!

How to enable ART

ART is currently a development preview feature in Android 4.4.x KitKat. You can enable it by:

go to Android’s Settings / About phone

continuously tab Build number over and over until it says you’re a developer, then hit back and you’ll see the new Developer Options just above the About phone item

under Developer Options / Select Runtime, select Use ART, it’ll reboot and optimize all your apps. (so this first reboot will take a while)

Given Mobile Hidden Camera’s strictly stealthy nature we know it’s not the most user friendly app on the playstore. That’s simply because we put user privacy and security our very top priority.

No compromise whatsoever.

Well, still whenever we find ways to make life easier for our users, we go ahead.

In our newly released MHC v4.1 we’ve fully revamped the way users select the file storage location. Now, under the “file protection” settings page you can easily see the chosen location, and you can easily select a location from a few given options.

“When I turn on ‘Hide images and videos from gallery’ no images or videos are taken!”, it’s pretty much the most frequently asked question from our users. In fact we get quite a number of this everyday.

Well, it turns out, oops… MHC’s just doing its job too well; all operations are so secretly taken without evidence, and even the user who shot the images and videos himself doesn’t know the job is done. And not just the job is done, it’s actually very well done indeed.

The thing is, under this “hide files from gallery” mode, MHC saves the images and videos secretly into a special hidden folder. A lot of users just don’t see that hidden place so they start to complain it doesn’t work, well, until we tell them to check MHC’s settings summary so then they get the full storage location.

Even then, some of them still have issues finding that location given the full path. That’s because the folder itself is “hidden”.

You can actually use any file exploring apps, e.g. Root Explorer, ES File Explorer, etc., to browse the location; but you gotta make sure the app itself has “show hidden files” enabled. Only then will it reveal MHC’s special hidden folder.

Sorry for that little bit of inconvenience, but well, that’s all by design as our very first design principal of Mobile Hidden Camera is “get it HIDDEN and SAFE”. And sorry for being a bit stubborn on this, we are not going to make MHC files easier to find, simply because that would otherwise hurt our users’ privacy!

In fact, we have never sat idle over the last few months. We have completely re-written MHC’s sophisticated spy engine. The latest MHC update, powered by the great Spy Engine V4, is more than capable of utilizing the latest multi-core Android devices and even push them to the extreme to deliver the best performance and reliability in spy shooting.

Today we’re very excited to announce the immediate release of MHC V4, our latest and greatest release of Mobile Hidden Camera ever. This new technological advancement not only re-assures MHC’s position as the undisputed Number One Mobile Spy Shooting Solution, more importantly it also forms the perfect platform for limitless possibilities in the future. We’re sure we can deliver even greater ideas and features in our upcoming releases!